New Orleans "Whut" Moments

Thanksgving 2005

I've been spending a lot of time considering why our family lives in New Orleans. Most things I read about New Orleans, especially this week, don't capture the layers of the city. Maybe I need to start a scrapbook of the writing that meets my approval, capturing hundreds of voices, picking what speaks to me and ignoring the rest. Others are doing that.

I'm tired of the rah-rah-New-Orleans descriptions that ignore the trap of poverty that leaves so many stuck. Instead, optimistic writers wave their hand at the flavors and the sweaty climate and assume the outsider-reader understands the down-home feeling we get most times we eat together.  I'm sick of the reports and opinion pieces that disregard nuance and history and claim they hold expert answers. I don't believe that we have to decide that the city either has made progress or has not. It's not a guilty/not guilty paradigm. I'm tired of people from other places asking me if I really still like it here. As if my affection for the city is going to wear off.

Everyday I discover something in New Orleans that makes me ask myself, "whuuut?" Some of these things are delightful and others are mournful. The city shouts at me everyday, begging me to figure it out.

This week, there are hundreds of tiny lizards everywhere. In my backyard, on my walk to the grocery, while I bike down the street, 2-inch lizards dash out of my way, hiding. It's as if the bigger lizards from early summer shrunk.  Whut?

We incarcerate people in Orleans Parish more than any other parish in Louisiana. We incarcerate people in Louisiana more than any other state in America. America incarcerates people more than any other nation. We jail people here more than any other place in the world. Whut?

Our house is raised three feet off the ground. Nearly every house on our street is. Just a bunch of houses perched in a row, groundless. The year after the storm, four-year-old Ramona hypothesized that our house was up-high so that the lost cats could live under there.  Whut?

Tonight, thirteen-year-old Ramona and I stood in the newly renovated band room at Lusher High School, learning about the school's arts programs. She's going to high school in a year.  Whut?

On the first anniversary of Katrina, I started my day in the same band room. The room was tidy, but the paint was peeling.  Squatters had lived there months before. At the high school's morning meeting that day, all of the teachers and students observed a moment of silence for the dead and displaced. I stood in the doorway, looking at my feet. I expected the silence would lead to a solemn dismissal. Instead the students erupted into whoops and cheers. They were home. Whut?

One of my students was chronically tardy to school that year. His family was living in their car. I see his mom around town all the time; she's well and her son is in college. Whut?

Friday night Philip and I went to dinner at Ye Olde College Inn, a restaurant a few blocks from my house. Years ago, maybe twenty, it used to be just a po-boy shop, the kind of place you left smelling like french fries. Last week, their special was a local fish served on a bed of quinoa. Quinoa. Whut? (We opted for the fried green tomatoes with shrimp remoulade and an oyster po-boy with melted cheese and bacon bits, but our clothes couldn't have told you that.)

On the wall of Ye Olde College Inn, local athletic heros' photos are posted. One photo is of "Coach Taylor," a woman who started coaching in high school girls in the 1950s; she taught Philip to swim. Twenty-five years later she taught Sumner and Ramona to swim in her same backyard pool, half a mile from our house. Whut?

Our next door neighbors rolled into the restaurant a few minutes after us; we all moved into our houses in the summer of 2006. After living at his house for a week or so, our neighbor came home to find his yard had been cut. Later that night, a Mr. Christmas came by to meet the new owner. Mr. Christmas explained that he did many of the yards on the block and had been doing this one too. Our neighbor paid him and the pattern continued.  Mr. Christmas and his two sons do most of the yards on the block.  They did before the storm and they still do. Whut?

The thing is, this place is really messed up. The summers are too hot and there are lots of pot holes. We're sinking. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Racism is alive and well. Poor folks are being displaced rapidly and systematically. Still, I feel like New Orleans can't lie about itself as much as other cities do. This is part of the complicated equation that equals me living here.